Mani Monday
One of my favorite memories of Music History was studying late with my friends at my piano teacher’s house when thunder storms rolled in. We studied in the kitchen which overlooked rolling hills and endless sky, and when the storms came in, we would shut off the lights and watch the lightning flash across the sky.
The thunder storms are one of the things I miss about Houston as well. I thought Calgary had pretty wicked storms, but they pale in comparison to Houston’s torrential downpours. For our first storm, hubby and I rolled up the blinds and sat on our area rug with popsicles and watched the sky for 30-40 minutes. There wasn’t a single beat between the bolts of lightning – they just overlapped one another continuously. It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.
To do this Lightning Bolt mani, this is what I armed myself with:
- Medium grey and metallic gold polish
- Scotch tape
- Scissors
And this is what I did:
1. Base coat.
2. Two coats of Medium Grey polish, and let it dry.
3. Cut 4 pieces of scotch tape per nail – cut diagonally and approximately 0.5cm in width.
4. When your polish is super dry, arrange the tape on your nails like the picture below:
5. Apply a coat of metallic gold polish and peel off the tape immediately after each nail.
6. After it’s completely dry, apply a top coat. The very first picture above is finished with a satin matte topcoat, and the picture below is finished with a shiny topcoat. I think I prefer the matte myself 
Have fun!
Mani Monday
A number of years back, I bought a fluorescent yellow Essie polish (Funky Limelight), not knowing it was a matte finish. I love Essie, but this was just awful. As you know, I’m not an expert polisher, and this particular finish just killed me. No matter what I did, it just streaked and streaked. However, it opened my eyes to the possibility of matte finishes and I’ve been rather enamoured by it ever since. Skeptical about matte finishes though, I vowed not to buy a matte polish for over $10. This Orly matte topcoat fit the bill!
Though it is a matte topcoat, I’d have to agree with other online reviewers that it gives more of a satin matte as opposed to a super flat matte. I’m digging the look though, and so does my mom! In these pics, I tried to give you a fair idea of how matte and gloss finishes compare next to each other. This is what I did:
1. Apply a base coat.
2. Two layers of Joe Fresh polish in Orchid and gave it some time to dry.
3. One layer of Orly Matte top, and let it dry. I found this matte topcoat to be much faster drying than my glossy topcoats.
4. You can end it here, but if you want some glossy designs as well, this is when I apply tape and add a thin layer of a glossy topcoat. Peel tape off each nail immediately after polishing.
That’s it! I’d like to add as well that I really like the rubberized grip on the Orly bottle – plus it comes with more product than a typical bottle of polish – at least 3 mL more!
mini Cinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Muffins
Once upon a time, I was perusing Pinterest and came across an insanely scrumptious picture of a Cinnamon Pull Apart muffin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks and kept revisiting WendySeeWendyDo.com just to drool over it. Alas, I couldn’t handle it anymore, and decided to try my hand at it. However, I only have a mini muffin pan, so that’s why mine are bite-sized!
Other than a few minor changes I made (like cutting the sugar content in half), I followed Wendy’s recipe to a tee. Click here to visit her site! The following is simply a copy & paste of her ingredients and directions, and the text in RED is what I ended up doing:
Ingredients (this made 11 bite sized muffins for me)
- Pillsbury Simply Rustic French Bread dough
- 1/2 stick of butter
- 1 cup sugar (I only used 1/2 cup of sugar)
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350ºF.
2. In a small skillet, brown butter over medium-low heat, about 5 minutes. You know the butter is browned when it turns a light caramel color and smells slightly nutty. ((Be careful not to burn the butter!)) Once browned, set the butter aside to cool.
3. Remove bread dough from tube and place on a cutting board. Starting in the middle, divide the dough with a small slit. Then divide again and again until you have 31 slits. Using a very sharp knife, slice the dough. You should end up with 32 slices. Flatten each slice with you hands or a rolling pin and place on a sheet of parchment or wax paper. (I didn’t have a rolling pin on hand, so I tried flattening them with my hand with very little success. I finally gave up and used a wooden chopstick – works wonders!)
4. In a bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
5. To assemble the muffins, brush each dough slice with the brown butter. Then sprinkle with the entire sugar mixture. (Yes, ALL of the cinnamon sugar!) Stack the dough slice on top of each other. (some stacks will have five slices and some will have six.) Using a sharp knife, slice the stacks down the middle. (Since mine are mini, I only stacked 3 slices together before slicing them down the middle)
6. Place two of the sliced stacks, side by side, cut side down into a greased muffin tin. Repeat with the rest of the stacks.
7. **This step is very important!!** Before you put the muffin tin in the oven place it on a larger, rimmed baking sheet. This will catch any butter/sugar overflow and avoid a very smokey oven. (Yes, VERY important, because I forgot. I was too excited to get them in the oven, and I ended up having to clean up a couple of drippings on the oven bottom >_< )
Before & After
8. Bake muffins for 20-25 minutes until tops are golden brown. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Gently remove. Enjoy!! (10-12 minutes if you’re making mini’s like mine)
Mani Monday
I’m down in Houston visiting the boy, and it is steamin’ hot. Sunny, cloudless, with a constant of about 35 degrees celsius every single day. That’s about 10 degrees over my ‘happy-content-i-love-summer’ limit. In order to help balance things out, I went and bought a moody slate blue and a gunmetal polish for my Double french manicure today
This is what I did:
1. Cut scotch tape into thin strips – two per nail.
2. Base coat.
3. Two coats of Blue Slate polish from Revlon and give it ample time to dry.
4. Apply two parallel strips of tape on each nail.
5. Apply Gunmetal polish from Sally Hansen one nail at a time and peel off the tape immediately after each one.
6. After that’s completely dry, apply a top coat.
Gotta love using tape – everything just looks neat and tidy!
Mani Monday
I stopped in Superstore yesterday afternoon to pick up a few necessities (namely PC Chocolate Chunk cookies and a loaf of raisin bread) when I got sidetracked and found myself in the cosmetics aisles. To be honest, I was looking for the magazines. If I have time, I always go peruse the magazine and book aisle first before I do any actual shopping, just ’cause I like to look at pretty pictures, and I don’t want my tub of ice cream melting in my basket while I’m doing so. Yesterday while looking for the magazine aisle, my eye caught the Joe Fresh cosmetics display with all its nail colour glory. At 3 for $9.99 and all kinds of fun colours to choose from, I wasn’t going to walk away empty handed!
In order to do my Grey-Yellow Polka Dot mani, this is what I armed myself with:
- Joe Fresh polish in FOG (medium grey) and CANARY (primary yellow)
- A thick-ish piece of paper for my blob of nail polish (so it won’t seep through)
- A brush with a pointy end at the handle to make polka dots with (my mascara wand for my eyebrows did the trick)
And now, this is what I did:
1. Base coat.
2. Two coats of medium grey polish.
3. Dabbed a blob of primary yellow polish onto my small sheet of paper, and tested out my polka dots with the handle end of my brush.
4. Dabbed my brush handle again in my yellow polish blob, dabbed it once or twice on the paper to take off the excess, then applied it on my nails.
5. Let it all dry for a while then applied a shiny top coat.
Easy peasy right?
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Make-up Portfolio:
